The “deep state,” which is solidly against Trump, includes all key editorial boards of the leading daily newspapers and TV networks which control the approved discourse; the “brain trusts” (Brookings, Heritage, etc.) which produce quasi-analyses to order, but always in defense of the continuing global hegemony; plus the military-industrial complex, the Congressional duopoly, and the massive lobbying industry. All of them oppose, above all, Trump’s evident desire for détente with Russia, because visceral Russophobia is the alpha and omega of the establishmentarian world outlook. This is not at all impacted by the fact that China will be America’s key global-strategic rival in the long run.

Trump has dared challenge three holy cows of the establishment. One is the so-called free trade, which is nothing of the kind, but an oligarchic racket. Another is the global empire: behind his slogan “America first” is a view of the United States as a normal power which pursues its own interests in a world populated by other powers, and not as the only legitimate power and the one that counts. The third is immigration control, which is contrary to the ideology of the liberal establishment—but is also opposed to the financial interests of a significant segment of the corporate America, which wants to keep the price of labor as low as possible, regardless of the cultural, financial, and security costs of such suicidal policy.

Q: NATO seems rudderless because of Trump’s lack of interest in the alliance. Is [secretary-general] Stoltenberg in no-man’s land now?

ST: Not quite! He has allies in the bureaucratic machine of the United States and the U.S. officialdom as a whole, which deliberately endeavors to sabotage Trump. For example, on August 9 the New York Times reported that senior U.S. national security officials effectively conspired to prevent the President from even potentially upsetting the adoption of a joint statement at last month’s NATO summit in Brussels. They encouraged NATO ambassadors to agree on the final communique even before the opening of the meeting. That means that the bureaucratic machinery has usurped the prerogatives of executive decision-makers, in order to prevent the constitutionally authorized chief executive to even potentially adopt decisions which may differ from their intent. In this specific case, the key conspirator was none other than Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton. The man who should be theoretically his right-hand man has assumed the right to behave as an independent actor—without any constitutional or legal basis—and to impose his policy on the President. This episode, by no means isolated, had the character of an outright conspiracy between U.S. officials, NATO diplomats, a defense ministers of key member countries.

International relations theory treats the state, the key unit of the system, as a sovereign, unitary actor. When the decision-making group articulates a given strategy, it is assumed that all elements of the state structure will focus their energies to achieve its realization. But now we have an unprecedented situation. We can no longer talk of the unitary model of the American foreign policy. Within Trump’s team, including Pence, Mattis and Pompeo, you have people who do not agree with his desire to establish a new modus vivendi with Russia’s President Putin, and are even trying to sabotage such policy.

Let me give you a specific example. When Trump met Putin for the first time in Hamburg just over a year ago, and said that he wanted a new era in mutual relations, his UN Ambassador Nikki Haley declared, “we don’t trust the Russians and never will!” This is nothing short of torpedoing executive policy-making from within.

Likewise, in the tsunami of hysterical rage following Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki on July 16, we have been told any number of times that there existed a “consensus” of U.S. intelligence agencies on the Russian interference in American elections. That is simply not true! There are 16 Federal intelligence agencies in the United States; yet Obama’s select top operatives in just two of them, Brennan (CIA) and Comey (FBI) handpicked analysts to prepare a fact-free report which concluded that there was a high probability of Russian interference. The NSA did not accept this finding, it insisted on a far lower level of certainty. The other 13 agencies were kept out of the loop altogether.

Even when such facts stare you in the face, crude lies are nevertheless repeated. It is obvious, however, that a significant segment of the American public refuses to be subjected to collective manipulation. The corporate media machine’s credibility is at its lowest point ever.

Q:What after Trump? Will he fight for a second mandate?

?ST: Various deep-state operatives in the United States now count on his impeachment as a result of the ongoing Mueller probe. Special investigator Mueller has no proof of the alleged collusion of the Trump campaign and the Russians, but he uses peripheral indictments unrelated to the probe, such as those against Manafort, to bring him down. It’s like Hannibal’s strategy at Cannae. This first pincer will seek to destroy Trump by quasilegal means, like Nixon. The second is to push him by all means possible into a war against Iran, with the help of Saudi Arabia and Israel . . . Trump’s enemies want this war both in order to maintain the concept of global dominance and “engagement,” and because they hope that such war would discredit Trump and ensure a Democrat victory in 2020. When you look at the list of demands Pompeo presented to Iran a month ago, including the end of any aggressive rhetoric against Israel, terminating “subversion” in Syria etc., it is obvious that no sovereign state can accept them. It’s comparable to the Austrian-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in July 1914.

In today’s America, in a naked form, we see the active collusion of all key actors of the shadow government. Dismissive of the democratic will of the people as expressed in the election, they are hell-bent on imposing their agenda. All along, active sabotage of the executive by the bureaucracy is a real and present danger. . . . Even if it does not impeach Trump after the November midterm election, the permanent state will not allow his reelection in November 2020. It has always opposed him every step of the way, and the regime-change scenario of some kind will be applied—if not Nixon’s from August 1974, then perhaps Plan B as seen in Dallas in November 1963.